1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to fasteners. More particularly, the invention relates to a collated strip of nails for use in association with a powered nail gun. Specifically, the invention relates to a collated strip of nails that is connected together by at least a pair of wires welded on opposing sides of the shanks of the nails in the strip.
2. Background Information
It is customary for framing and trim carpenters to use gas powered, electric or pneumatically powered nail guns to drive nails into the pieces of wood they are connecting together. In order for the nails to be loaded into the nail gun, they are formed into a connected or collated strip which is then fed into the magazine of the gun. Several patents have addressed the formation of the collated strip of nails.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,880,700 to Osuga et al discloses a collated strip of nails that are held together with strips of paper or resin tape. The strips of tape are positioned proximate the heads and tips of the nails and are glued thereto. Adhesive tape connections between the nails in the strip are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,880,700 to Osuga et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,579 to Shelton; U.S. Pat. No. 4,836,372 to Shelton; U.S. Pat. No. 3,515,271 to Bader; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,536 to Ito et al. The paper tapes disclosed in these prior patents tend to flag, i.e., to break off in a manner that leaves small pieces of the tape and/or adhesive sticking out from under the head of the nail. This tends to detract from the appearance of the finished product.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,913,611 to Leistner discloses a collated strip of nails connected together by a plurality of linked plastic collars. This type of linkage has been found undesirable because of the quantity of small plastic pieces that shatter off the strip as the nails are driven into the wood substrate by the nail gun. The plastic pieces become projectiles during the actual firing of the nail gun and need to be cleaned up after the project is completed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,085 to Shida et al discloses the use of a special adhesive strip to connect the nails to each other. The adhesive in the strip includes a polymer such as talc, wood flour, thermoplastic and the like, which acts as a stiffening agent for the adhesive strip.
Various inventors have proposed using thin wires to connect the nail shanks together. For example, Gabriel et al. disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,482,420, using a pair of wires that are welded to the individual shanks on one side of a strip of screws. The wires are welded proximate the heads and the tips of the screws which are disposed substantially at right angles to the wires. Leistner discloses in U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,993, a method of connecting a plurality of clipped nails together which includes forming grooves in one side of the shanks of the plurality of nails and then welding wire strips into those grooves.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,896,135 and 6,557,703 to Leitner, disclose the use of two or more spaced apart wires that are welded to the shanks of a plurality of nails. In this instance, the nails are disposed at an angle other than ninety degrees to the wires and the wires are spaced approximately 6.5 mm to 7.5 mm apart from each other. The wires are all disposed on the same side of the shanks of the nails. U.S. Pat. No. 6,758,018 to Sutt also discloses using a pair of spaced apart wires to secure a plurality of nails together. The nails are again disposed at an angle other than ninety degrees to the wires and the wires on the same side of the shanks of the nails. Sutt also discloses using a plastic binding element and a paper binding element to form a collated package of nails.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,975 to Leistner discloses the use of a pair of thermoplastic-coated wires that are adhered to the shanks of a plurality of nails. Yet again, the wires are disposed on a single side of the shanks of the plurality of nails. The wire-connected collated packages of nails are designed to be coiled and then loaded into the nail guns. One of the problems experienced with this type of connector is that a balance has to be found in the wire selected. The wire has to be strong enough to hold the collated package together in sufficiently rigid structure to feed easily through the nail gun, yet weak enough to break as the nail is fired from the nail gun.
There is therefore a need in the art for an improved connector mechanism for a collated strip of nails with the connector being sufficiently rigid for the collated strip to feed easily through a nail gun, but being sufficiently weak enough for the individual nails to break off the collated strip as the nail gun is fired.